Demos: What do you think of them?
 

Fishcube asked in her thread where to download demos which gave me the idea:
What makes a good demo, especially when talking about adventure games?

I recently played the PoP:The Sands of time demo which was really fascinating! You get to try all the moves in both combat and climbing/jumping conditions, plus there are 2 big cinematics (one of them is probably the intro) for the gamer to see what the story is about.

Sands of time is not an adventure though so I guess it is easier to make a good demo out of it. Some people said in another thread that Beyond Good and Evil had a mediocre demo that didn't arouse tha gamer's interest. I haven't played the demo but I agree with the opinion that BG&E unfolds it's true beauty only when experienced as a whole.

Well I seem to have got a lillte off topic here (how did I manage to do that when I set the topic myself? :eek: )
I rarely play adventure demos and usually rely on the reviews but in the rare occasions that I do, I am usually persuaded to buy the game. At least that happened with Syberia, Grim Fandango and Curse of Monkey Island, as I can recollect. I don't remember being discouraged to buy a game after playing it's demo, but then again I don't play many of them (demos that is) so I guess that doesn't say much.


Oh well, anyway I mostly wanted to hear your opinions on demos. What, in your opinion should or shouldn't be included in a demo? Should adventure games (and story-driven games in general) unleash demos or not? I particularly think adventures, action-adventures and survival-horror games to be story driven allthough more and more games seem to fall into this category.
Also what was the best demo you ever played? What made it so good and did the actual game fulfill the promises? Now that I think of it, should a demo just try to be enjoyable no matter what or representative of the whole game?

Ok I'll just shut up now and let you tell me what you think :)

A good demo should be representative of all the game's types of gameplay, if the game in fact does have various gameplay styles.

Demos should have a puzzle / piece of game made only for the demo which reflects the rests of the game.

Not sure why I even asked about demos, since we have dial-up. Looks like most will take over 8 hours to download :(

Man I read the subject of this thread as " Demons: What do you think of them?"

So disappointing.

I suggest using a download manager. Or if you can part with some money, gaming magazines that come with 'free' demo discs.